One of the phrases sometimes heard in certain circles I have traveled in was “Don’t be a victim,” or its near cousin “Don’t allow yourself to be victimized.” While these words of wisdom were passed around in some of the rough, hard biker hangouts up in the Santa Cruz mountains, they are relevant to the world of Borderless Networks as well.

In terms of mitigating risk, one of the very best things you can do is actually one of the simplest. When it comes to passwords, pick a good one and use it. Mix in numbers, special characters, uppercase and lowercase and avoid names and dictionary words and you are going to be in a far better place. Oh, and as 4chan illustrated when they hacked a Christian dating site, never assume that your password will not be stolen – you may want to use different passwords. For mobile devices, which are prone to being left in various places, it is critical to have a password protected locking home screen.

Welcome to the technology grab-bag…we have a little somethin’ somethin’ for everyone I think – bottom line – the hits keep coming! Tons of huge stuff from our Borderless Team that we have the privilege of breaking down for you…but you gotta watch the show. In a nutshell: Catalyst 4500, New SUPS, Old SUPS with new Skills….plus the 800 series ISRs, Fire and Forget security now available on your iPhone with AnyConnect, AND UCS Express….(Cisco data center mojo now available in snack size…)

Enable great user-experiences, regardless of where the user is on the planet.

Those are the table stakes requirements of today’s Data Center networks. Do that and business leaders will ignore it like a referee that never makes a bad call in a sporting event. Click-to-“Right Now”, Borderless, 24x7x365 networks. No problem. We can do that.

But with the pace of technology change in today’s Data Center, so much more is being expected of the network: Read More »

Today, while we have seen that there is plenty of meat in Borderless Networks in the office, Borderless Networks has plenty of meat on the road as well. Bob, our enterprise worker, travels a lot, doing tradeshows and customer visits and dispensing Kool-Aid of various types. When he knows he is going to have to do some heavy lifting with PowerPoint he is sure to take a laptop running AnyConnect, a secure VPN client that works with the Cisco ASA firewall back at HQ to give secure, encrypted remote access. Even if he is in a coffee shop using public Wi-Fi, he knows that his data is safe because everything is going back through that encrypted tunnel. But it is more than just connectivity that we are talking about here because traffic goes through a Cisco Ironport web security appliance, filtering spyware, trojans and the like. And, just like when he is in the office, TrustSec ensures that he has access to what he needs and can’t touch the things he doesn’t. Security is deeply integrated into the network itself, not just an afterthought or add-on appliance.

Last week, Cisco sponsored Gartner ITxpo in Orlando. By all accounts the event was a success, with around 7000 attendees, over 1000 of whom were CIOs. In John Chambers’ keynote session, Gartner’s Ken Dulaney said that he liked Borderless Networks and it set Cisco on a good course. However some customers felt that it lacked “meat.” A few other analysts, reporters and industry writers have also indicated that they had trouble “getting it.”

I think that part of the problem is that many people understand things better when provided with concrete examples than when presented with high level statements such as “Connect anyone, anywhere, on any device.” With that in mind, let’s look at some customer stories.

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